Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia

5th May – 8th May 2018

After the girls at our hostel agreed to share the taxi with us, we set off towards Seminyak. They were staying in Kuta, so we all assumed that they would get dropped off first, which they did in the end, after us getting within 1km of our hostel, before the driver turned back on himself. It was very strange and confusing and made the journey so much longer.

Just after 1.30, we finally arrived at our hostel, after getting stuck in so much traffic! We weren’t allowed to check in until 2 though, which was a little annoying. There wasn’t any point in us going out before we had checked in, as we didn’t know much about the area, so we sat in the café and waited.

Once we had checked in, we went up to our room, which was on the third floor, in a hotel with no lift – I was hot and unimpressed with this. We got to our room and it was nicer than expected and dumped our bags. We spent a little bit of time researching Seminyak, looking firstly for ice cream places, before heading out.

Joe had found an ice cream place two minutes around the corner. I was hungry and excited, so we set off there. When we arrived, I was heartbroken to see the freezers were empty; we were told that they were shut until 4, even though the website said it was open all day. We sat and looked up other places to go but as neither of us had sun cream on, we couldn’t really go anywhere without going back to the hostel.

We walked back to the hostel and got sun cream on, and got the bag ready, so that we could walk down towards the beach. Joe had found a few more ice cream places down in that direction, so we were going to try them instead.
After about twenty minutes of walking, we were near the beach front and we found the ice cream stands. As the prices were more than double the closed place (Stephano’s), we decided to wait on the ice cream and try Stephano’s again for dessert after dinner.

While we were down near the beach, we thought we would explore a little. We walked along the sand for a little bit, but I wasn’t impressed so far with Seminyak – it’s a lot more commercialised, full of just holidaymakers, not like Ubud, but we had only seen a tiny bit. We stopped in one of the beach front cafes for a drink. There were some big beanbags on the front to lounge on, while we watched the busy beach go by.

Once we had finished our drinks, we decided to start to make our way back. As we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and we missed out on ice cream earlier, we decided to have an early dinner, followed by ice cream. As we walked along the beach, we got some prices for some surf lessons, as there were lots of surfers in the sea, and it’s something that we wanted to have another go at.

Just off the beach, there were plenty of restaurants and cafes to eat in, but as we walked along and looked at the menus, they were all so expensive. We thought we would find cheaper eateries, if we headed more inland, towards the hotel, so this is what we did. We had passed a place on the way down which looked good, and was very cheap, so we had that in mind if we didn’t see anywhere else.

After walking almost all the way back to the hostel without finding anywhere, we ended up in Warung T3asty (the one we had seen earlier). We sat down and decided that we were having an Indonesian night, food-wise. I ordered chicken satay and Joe ordered mahi-mahi with rice and veggies. When they arrived, there was so much food and it was all so tasty. We both had a drink too and when we paid up, it cost us 100,000 IDR, with a tip (around £5)!

From the warung, we made our way back to Stephano’s, hoping that it was now open. On the way, we stopped in a couple of supermarkets to get something for breakfast in the morning, to stop us eating out, and some biscuits for later in the evening, in case we got hungry. When we arrived at the ice cream place, it was open, but they only had two flavours available. When I asked why, the man explained that there had been a power cut and all of the ice cream in the freezer had melted, so had to be thrown away. I felt a bit sorry for them at this point because it was something out of their control. We got a scoop each anyway and sat in the little seating area and enjoyed it.

After we had finished our ice cream, we made our way back to the hotel. It was an early night for us, but it was needed, to try and catch up on some blog writing. When we got back, we had long overdue showers, before I began writing and Joe did some research for the next couple of days. It was a long night of productive work and it got to about 11.30 before we fell asleep.

The next morning, we had an alarm set for 7, as we were heading to a waterpark for the day (recommended by Katie (who I met in South America) as she was here a few months ago). We got up, and while Joe nipped out to get some yogurt to go with the granola bites we had bought for brekkie, I got ready and packed the bag for the day. When Joe got back, we ate and got our sun cream on, before setting off just after 8.

As it was only a 55 minute walk, according to Google maps, we decided to attempt the walk to save the hassle of haggling with taxi drivers. I’m glad we did too, as it was an easy stroll, despite being hounded with offers for taxis, transport and/ or bikes along the way, and we were there just after 9, when it opened.

When we arrived at the park, we had already pre-booked, so just had to show the woman the booking, and get our wristbands. As we had paid a little extra to include lunch, we had multiple wristbands to keep track of.

Inside the park, once the bag was away in a locker, we made our way to one of the exciting rides (although they were all exciting in the end). This first one, had a moving floor, so you had to stand in and it counted down before the floor moved and you dropped. Even though I have always loved that type of stuff, I had to take a few minutes to gather myself before getting in. Once I did, I loved it!

From here, we made our way around the whole park, going on all of the rides. There were two more with the moving floor, and each time I needed time to prepare myself before the getting in, but I loved them all. It’s a good job that Joe was with me to encourage me though because I don’t think I would have tried without him. None of the rides were overly busy, which was great and by 11, we had tried them all!

After this, we had a little rest and a lie on some sun beds, to give the new dose of sun cream time to soak in. It was hot in the sun though, so we didn’t stay in it too long. After about twenty minutes, we made our way back to the rides, to have second tries on most of them – this time taking the GoPro on the ones that we could. It started to get a little busier, so we had to queue for a few, but no longer than ten minutes.

At 1 o’clock, we took a break for lunch. As it was included, we saved so much money, which was great. We had to order pizza though, but this wasn’t a problem for either of us. Once we had eaten, we did some more lying on sun beds to let more sun cream soak in, and allow our food to settle.

As we still needed more time to let the food go down, we had a chill on the lazy river. We did a few laps, where Joe pushed me around for a little bit – it was great, although a tiny bit too slow for me!

Once we were ready, we went back to the rides. We went on them all multiple times and it was so much fun. There were two where we could race each other, and these were a big hit with me, mostly because I won seven out of eight of them! As I’m nice, I let Joe win the very last one, didn’t want him to go home sad!

Our final ride of the day was the boomerang ride, which was definitely our favourite of the day! For this one, we shared a double dingy, and went down a slide before being thrown up a steep side and falling back down again, it was so fun! We finished the day with a swim in the pool and a lie on the sun beds to dry off, before setting off back to Seminyak (we’d walked to Kuta to get to the park).

It was just after 5 when we set off, and as we stopped in a few shops along the way to re-stock sun cream and insect repellent, it was way after 6 when we reached Seminyak. As it was getting late and we were hungry from all our swimming and stair climbing to get to the rides, we decided to not go back to the hotel, but go straight out for dinner.

We wandered down the main street towards Double Six beach in Seminyak, where we had walked the day before. I had spotted a Greek warung that looked good, so we decided to try there. As lovely as the Indonesian food is, we need to mix it up with other cuisines, a little bit. I ordered a souvlaki and Joe had a moussaka and they were both so good, it was worth the visit!

From the warung, we made our way back to the hotel. We were both very tired at this point, with tired and achy legs, especially near our bums where the water battered us going down the slides. We made a quick dessert stop at Stephano’s, where there were lots more flavours! I had creamy Nutella and caramel and Joe had mint and cupcake with chocolate and they were a good end to the day.

We were back at the hostel just before 8, and we needed a rest! We planned our next day and did a little bit of writing, before getting into bed and starting a new series on Netflix, finally!

Our last day in Seminyak started with a very lazy morning! We treated ourselves to a lie in and spent the morning chilling out. Once we were finally up and ready, we left the hotel at around 11am and set off towards the centre of Seminyak to see Petitenget Temple.

It was another hot day, so it was an uncomfortable walk, but it was mostly flat, so that made things a little easier. We would walk in the shade when possible to try and keep cool, but it was definitely a sweaty walk! Just under an hour later, we arrived in the centre and had a look around some restaurants and market stalls, along the way. We didn’t stop for long, as we really didn’t need anything new.

At about 12.30, we made it to the temple. We had forgotten about the correct dress code, so we had to rent a sarong for Joe – I luckily had mine in the bag; although we still had to apparently pay to get in but I don’t think anyone would have stopped us if we didn’t need a sarong for Joe. We had a look around the temple and took some photos of the beautiful décor, before handing back Joe’s sarong and heading to the beach.

By this time, we were more than ready for a swim in the sea, so luckily the temple was right by the beach. However, when we stepped onto the beach, we were both quite disappointed with it. It was quite a dirty beach and the sand wasn’t great. We had a little paddle of our feet and the water was freezing, but it was instantly refreshing.

As we were now refreshed, we decided against the full swim as it didn’t feel safe to leave the bags on the beach. Instead, we walked in the sea, back along the front, towards our hotel. We wandered along at a nice slow pace, looking for somewhere to get a drink. The prices were quite steep along the beach, but I guess that’s to be expected.
Eventually, we stopped in a little café on the front and sat on bar stools looking out over the beach. We both only ordered a drink: I had a chocolate milkshake and Joe tried the Bintang Radler, which was lemon beer and it was so nice! It’s the one and only beer that I actually like!

After sitting for a while, cooling off and enjoying the views, we decided it was time to move on. Before we left, we reapplied the sun cream and let that soak for a little bit. While we were waiting, we debated whether to do a surf lesson or not. We both wanted to but didn’t know if we could be bothered.

In the end, we decided to go for it, as I knew I would regret it if we didn’t. We wandered back along the beach, to price up some lessons. We had done some enquiring the first time we went to the beach, so intended to head back there, as he was charging 200,000 each with a teacher each (which is equivalent to £10). On the way, a man stopped us and asked if we wanted lessons, out of curiosity we asked for prices and it was the same, so we passed, as we liked the man we first spoke to. This man then told us to name our price, so we asked for 300,000 for both of us. He said that he would do it for that price, if we only had one teacher – we were fine with this, as we had one teacher for about eight people last time, and we knew what we were doing this time. The lesson was an hour long, with one teacher for just me and Joe, and then we had an hour to practice on our own, so we thought £15 was a bargain for this!

Once we were in the water, it was so much easier than last time. When the teacher was with us, I got up almost every time, and we both got up on our first goes. It was so much fun! We were very successful, even after the teacher left us to practice, so we were both very happy and glad that we had decided to go for it. The only unsuccessful thing was the GoPro, but this was because the SD card was full, again! The quality is much better, but it takes up much more memory, which is a little annoying.

After gaining rashes on our knees and on Joe’s hands, we decided to get out just before 5. This was about the time our lesson was over anyway, so it was good timing. We handed the surf boards back and paid up, before having a quick rinse off.

Once we had gathered ourselves, we carried on down the beach. We were getting closer to the exit that we came in, on the first day, but we didn’t want to get dressed until we had dried a bit. Instead, we stopped at another beachfront café for a drink and a relax on the beanbags. We watched the sun start to set and we were very relaxed. We did some people watching, which was entertaining, before we decided to make a move as we were getting hungry.

We left the beach, and walked back up the main street towards our hotel. We were looking for somewhere to eat along the way, but nothing really looked too appealing for us. As we knew we liked it, and it was very good value, we ended up back at T3asty, where we ate on the first night. We both ordered different things: I wasn’t keen on Joe’s but we both liked our own, so that was all that mattered.

As Joe went to pay up, I went to find a cash machine, as we needed cash for the next few days and had forgotten to get it out earlier. I didn’t realise how far the machines were though, so was gone a little longer than expected, making Joe worry, but I was fine!

Once I was back, we made our way back to the hotel, via Stephano’s (obviously). We both tried different flavours and they were just as good! It was such a great ice cream place, as it was also so cheap!

We got back to the hotel at around 7.30 and had a few things to sort out. We both had quick showers, before we had to sort our bags out for the next part of the trip. The flights that we booked to Labuan Bajo (on another island in Indonesia) were only domestic, and only included checked bags for up to 10kg. As we knew our bigger bags were more, we decided to leave them in storage and just take our small ones, as we were only gone for a couple of days. This meant there was a lot of swapping of things between bags, but Joe did a great job. While he was sorting this, I did some sewing of patches. I needed to reattach one that was half off, so thought I may as well out some others on while I was at it. I soon remembered how much of a difficult task it was on my back, but after a couple of hours, I had caught up!

After everything was packed up and we had checked all that we needed to, we got into bed and fell asleep around 11 – a little later than planned as we had an early start.

Once the alarm went off at 6.15, we snoozed it a couple of times before getting up and ready. As most things were already packed up, we just needed to add the last few bits to our bags before ordering the taxi.

The taxi got a little lost trying to find our hotel, so Joe had to go and find it, but once it arrived, we loaded it up and head for the airport. We were there with plenty of time, which we had planned, as we needed to find where to store our bags for the few days we were away. We got checked by security going into the airport building which is something I had never seen before: they wanted to see booking confirmation before we could enter and then we had to have our bags scanned straight away.

Once we were checked in, we made our way through security a second time, and walked to the gate. We had a look through duty free on the way and then waited at our gate for it to open.

Seminyak wasn’t quite as beautiful as I expected. I had imagined it to be similar to Ubud, but it wasn’t as culturally centred, it was more built for tourists. We still had a great time though and loved the water park and the surf lessons and it was good to see a different part of Bali. It’s time to leave Bali for a second time, as we fly over to the island of Flores for a few days doing something a little different!

To travel is to live, Katie x